


Scripture Strikes on the Soulless Serpentine-Or, Crowley Trips Over a Book and Breaks Himself.

by bluerosele



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Again, Aziraphale actively avoids business in his business, Crowley Trips and the World Ends, Fluff, Gen, Hurt Crowley, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Sappy, dripping with sap, painfully obvious pining though, please pick up after yourself Aziraphale demons could die, you're not subtle Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 11:51:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6422776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluerosele/pseuds/bluerosele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot of what Aziraphale does gives Crowley a headache.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scripture Strikes on the Soulless Serpentine-Or, Crowley Trips Over a Book and Breaks Himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Gosh I suck at titles. I am so sorry.

A lot of what Aziraphale does gives Crowley a headache. 

Or, well, more exact, as long as it doesn’t get Aziraphale blown up (“no, angel, I’m not going to let that go. I thought you—the book—my car was on fire”) Crowley will support him 99% of the time. So, it’s not so much what he does as what his intrinsic composition entails.   

More specifically, pressure builds behind Crowley’s eyes as Aziraphale unpacks his bibles to restock his no longer charred not-a-store-book-store. 

“How did those even survive?” Crowley says, muffling how tight his voice sounds in the mug of hot chocolate he’s brought to his lips. He hopes his forced apathy seeps through enough to cover it. 

“How did we?” Aziraphale says, probably feeling very proud of it, so Crowley rolls his eyes. Then he realizes, no wait sunglasses sunglasses all the time, so tilts them down to make an even bigger show of rolling his eyes again. Aziraphale, being the better being in every way, just raises his eyebrows. “Fine, let’s just chalk it up to divine intervention.” 

Crowley remembers why he sits in a room with 28 bible editions. 

“Did some-divine entity call upon their miraculous book finding skills or make a High priority special order?” Crowley smiles, tightening his grip on the mug handle when Aziraphale waves one of the blessed books at him. 

“I think we deserve some luxuries to level out what our last work week was like. I did bad for good.” 

“We should make that our catchphrase.” Aziraphale returns to arranging the thousands of books on the shelf; a location which, while still irritating to Crowley’s head, he’s used to ignoring. 

Aziraphale sighs like the world is not good enough to continue in. It’s a nice equilibrium.

“I am absolutely not going to refill this hot chocolate because I refuse to admit enjoying it. You need any?” Crowley asks, and Aziraphale shakes his head. Crowley heads towards the disproportionate amount of hot chocolate made upstairs. 

Crowley’s only made it so far before he trips on one of the millions of boxes, catching himself on more on the way down. Things, rather literally, go to hell. 

Holy objects affect on demonic elements range depending on where and how and what is interacting. In this event, Crowley’s foremost collisions were; a bible lying in an open box directly burning welts into his hand, a box of thick Aldred the Scribe's writings (probably in Aldred the Scribe's handwriting) casting out his leg from the box’s top forcing said leg backwards and away, and dust from within the bibles searing its way through Crowley’s throat. 

“S’ssssss—G— _fuck_.” Crowley gasps, holding back anything louder, because he’s done this well, and slithers to the far corner wall. It doesn’t matter though, Aziraphale witnesses the collapse, of course he does how could he not, and is next to him instantaneously. 

“Crowley? What’s happened. Dear, why aren’t you healing yourself?”

“I can’t here—I can’t, Azssszi, I can’t, _pleassse,_ ” Crowley chokes on the fire in his throat (how was there dust, they were new or just created, did Aziraphale miracle holy dust?) as Aziraphale looks panicked and touches Crowley’s shoulder lightly, and condemn it all, the touch leaves a scorch against his skin. Crowley can’t stop the scream then, Aziraphale touching him hurts, and he wants to burn.

The panic on Aziraphale’s face intensifies and he looks back at the cluster of books and boxes, then at Crowley, and shit, shit, shit Crowley can see him understand. “Oh, darling, no. I’m so sorry, I—how did I not know.” He reaches for Crowley again, but retracts his hand ashamed, which hurts Crowley more that the hand itself could have. 

Besides the rasp of Crowley drowning in dust, they stay silent while Aziraphale pushes the books away from the room, or universe, Crowley’s unsure. The air clears and he can begin to breathe again. 

“I, I didn’t know, I didn’t mean, oh I’m so sorry, I never meant to,” Aziraphale says, frantic.

“It’ssssss, it’sssss fine, don’t pleasssse don’t, it’sss not important,” Crowley sucks in clean, not divine dust ridden, air in the midst of his hissing fit. 

“Yes, it absolutely is.” Aziraphale’s tone takes on a dark quality of command Crowley hasn’t heard since he was a snake talking about trees. With the cushy exterior Aziraphale has cultivated (the book shop, the hot chocolate, using his seraphic authority to summon lost books), it’s hard to remember, even after the previous not-entirely-an-apoloclpyse-apocolypse, Aziraphale is the same angel sent to wield a flaming sword in the name of, well, that other guy. “You're hurt Crowley, that’s important. Something of mine hurt you and—” he trails off, staring elsewhere, and Crowley wants the face Aziraphale makes gone so bad forget the possible pain, Crowley cups his cheek to turn Aziraphale back to face him. The sting is there but it’s a pinprick compared to what it had been. Relief makes breathing and the stretching pull in his leg and the residing but intact headache bearable. 

Crowley’s so focused on this relief he doesn’t remember to let go, and they’re stuck staring at each other as Aziraphale breaths as deep as Crowley is now. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Aziraphale asks, actually having Crowley think about why he needed to keep it such a secret. There’s no other way of saying it besides, “because they’re something you liked,” which is just. He’d punch himself in the face if he had the ability to. 

“Oh, love,” Aziraphale smiles, and with it as close as it is, Crowley chokes again for different reasons. “I like you more.”

Here’s the thing about Angelic Love. It’s omnipresent passion for anything and everything that may or may not deserve it. This can be disconcerting to a demon who is supposed to be by design unable to love anything, but has somehow even broken that law and has found himself to feel this for an angel. Because of moments like these, with Aziraphale so close and caring, Crowley can easily, so easily, trick himself to believe it means more than it does, he’s a creature which is meant to trick the world, but he can’t let that happen. He knows it would destroy him. And, after the Apocalypse That Wasn’t, this would be embarrassing. 

So, despite this, Crowley instead shrugs off the angel to flick him on the nose. 

“ _Ow_?” Aziraphale splutters, retracting himself from Crowley’s space, laughing. 

“Your filing system got me first, sorry, but that was just tragic, even for you.” 

Aziraphale tries to huff, but cuts off his own grumbling with more laughing, “I thought it was perfectly charming.” 

“Well, you think that about everything. You probably feel that way about the mold growing on your ceiling, or how your air conditioning is a big machine which sits in the walls screaming but not actually doing anything, or—”

“You’ve learned a lot about my shop,” Aziraphale says with an odd tinge in his voice. Crowley isn’t capable of thinking too much on it with his brain trying to explode from what’s all happened. 

“Yes, because you won’t take me out. C’mon we get however many more centuries of worldly goods, let me take advantage of them and you.” 

The expression on Aziraphale’s face changes, and he opens his mouth as if to say something but stops. Instead he acknowledges Crowley’s leg, “We can’t really go anywhere with you crawling after me—don’t look at me like that crawling is a word, I’m not going to edit my vocabulary because you weren’t original with your naming yet. I know when I tried to help earlier I,” Aziraphale swallows. “It did more bad than good, but.” 

“That could also be our catchphrase,” Crowley cuts him off, he won’t have Aziraphale blame Crowley’s disposition with virtuous artifacts on himself. Aziraphale doesn’t seem impressed, but his discomfort in the proximity he is with Crowley is more apparent. That won’t do. 

“I flicked your nose and I didn’t burst into flames let’s say that’s a good sign.” Crowley pokes Aziraphale’s cheek again for good measure. He still doesn’t implode. “But you don’t need to, I can once I’m outside, just let me,” he attempts to shimmy upwards but shuffles down again when his grasp on the wall slips. The world is the worst so he lands on his leg at a wrong angle, of course, and hisses out probably more than necessary blessings. 

At this point, Aziraphale’s expression is worse than Crowley’s leg, but before he can say more wrong words to make it stop, Aziraphale’s touching him again. Which, while now not painful, is still distracting. 

“Let me fix this,” Aziraphale says, leaning in, and _does_. Crowley can patch himself up, but Aziraphale can heal, with a flowing mending that massages and settles all things wrong with, around, or in Crowley, who can’t help but sigh under the remedial kneading. It’s over too quickly, Aziraphale’s essence receding despite Crowley unintentionally latching on. He realizes their foreheads are pushed together. “I think I’ll do some redecorating. Check that the mold to see if it would kill customers,”

“You have no customers,” Crowley says, breathy and recovering from Aziraphale for all intents and purposes being inside him a few seconds ago. 

“Call the landlord to fix the air-conditioning.” 

“Is, you know,” Crowley points upwards. “Not your landlord?” 

“Rearrange the books.”

“Wait, no,” Aziraphale stops his list to listen to Crowley who isn’t quite sure how to say this. “Don’t with. You like the. Or you like editing? I’m not entirely sure why you have—but, look.” Again, Crowley doesn’t know how to talk. 

“Oh, stop, not everything's about you. I can’t have customers thinking they’re for sale,”

“You don’t have—”

“They’d never be able to afford them, I’d make it so they could never afford them. It’d be sad and ruin business.”

“You have no business—”

“Really, do shut up and come to dinner with me?” Aziraphale stands and holds out a hand for Crowley. 

“You do know how to charm a date,” Crowley says, taking his hand, reveling in how much it doesn’t hurt, how nice it feels. Aziraphale pulls Crowley up, as he always does, and smirks. 

"You love it."

"I do." 


End file.
